


So Spoke the Fates

by orphan_account



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Good Laufey (Marvel), Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Loki and Thor Are Not Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 18:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20362981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In the wake of his father's death, Loki Laufeyson is crowned king of Jotunheim. His is a reign red with blood.





	So Spoke the Fates

A child might cry, but Loki Laufeyson does not, watching the funeral of his father with dry eyes. It feels strange, that a father might die. Like a lie, or a jest made in bitter humour. 

But this is war, as his father explained to him the night before when he plaited Loki’s hair beneath the pitted moon, and a man may die suddenly, without reason, without even time to cry out. Without omen.

Even a father?, Loki asked.

Laufey’s hands stilled, leaving the braid half-finished down Loki’s back. 

Even a father, he answered. Even a king.

He will remember those words, Loki vows to himself. He will remember that anyone may die quickly - even a father who last night braided his son’s hair beneath the pitted moon, even a god, even a king - and he will fear it. He must. 

* * *

  
Peace. It is an Asgardian word spoken by Asgardian lips that means nothing here in the quiet halls where they buried his father. But Odin offers, and so Loki takes.

“I would not fight a child,” Is Odin’s quiet explanation, all that he gives.

Loki bows his head until his horns scrape the jagged floor. For all that his father taught him of pride, dignity, duty, he bows his head unto the king: “Go then, Odin Allfather. Our quarrel is ended.”

What Odin Allfather does not know is that Loki’s statement is punctuated by a Jotunn word echoed by a Jotunn heart: lie. War will come again, and this time it will be _ his _war. He will ride across Asgard on a horse colored red, carving his name, his father’s name, into their soil with the bones of Asgard’s fathers and its sons and its kings. 

Jotunheim, dear Allfather, does not know the meaning of the word peace.

* * *

  
At night (and this is his greatest shame) Loki creeps from his father’s great bed and slips into the candle-lit nursery where his brother lies, and they curl together, two small bodies melded as one. He begs Helblindi plait his hair, one long braid down his back, as did their father beneath the pitted moon. 

“Always, elder brother,” Is Helblindi’s soft reply. As he works quick fingers through Loki’s hair, Loki whispers to him of death, the death of a king, of lies and peace and a vow he made a long time ago. He whispers of such wicked, formless things until his voice grows hoarse and the sun begins to pinken the sky.

“Sleep now,” Helblindi murmurs, “Dawn is coming.”

And Loki does.

(They do not speak of this in the day. Weakness is a sickness best suffered in silence.)

* * *

Helblindi’s horns scrape the ice, his head bowed low and his fist, his fist clenched over his heart.

“My king,” He intones softly, “My king, my prince, my brother -”

His mouth quivers like a serpent prepared to strike, and Loki’s fist tightens around his spear. Much has changed in the centuries since he crept, silent and sad, into his brother’s chambers to sleep beside him. Long have his footsteps ceased to echo in those halls, long has Helblindi’s touch become cold and withdrawn, more a memory than a sensation. Death, they say, lurks in the most familiar of hearts. Trust no one, suspect all, for anyone may die quickly - even a father who last night braided his son’s hair beneath the pitted moon, even a god, even a king - and Loki has long known that he must fear it.

“I swear to you and to the crown,” Helblindi pauses to wet his lips, “An oath of my allegiance. Of my undying loyalty.”

It is strange and winsome urge that rises in Loki to fling his spear aside, fly from his father’s throne and curl beside his brother until they are as one once more - their tears mingling as one, their sorrows mingling as one - but nay, the green thread of childhood is long behind him now; before him, the crimson thread of war. He knows already how the Norns have woven his tapestry, with what ungentle fingers they have designed his fate. And if every now and then, a knife of strange, poignant grief slips beneath his ribs at that which he has lost, that which the Norns have taken, how can he be blamed? A heart is such a fickle, capricious thing, and he is not old enough, nor clever enough, nor a skilled enough mage to control it yet. Soon, yes. But not yet.

“I am glad to have thee with me,” Loki says, and dips his head. It is the last time that he shall ever bow to another. 

* * *

There are only so many sorrows the Norns can weave a man before he breaks. All men must have some kindness in their tapestry, however small and fleeting it might be. 

For him, it is Thor. The Allfather’s son. And he wonders at the irony of the Norns, but ponders on it not, for he will take love where he can find it. Love, a king may not always find easily. War, aye, but not love. And while Thor is young, thunder and passion and hunger, he does not seem to care that Loki is not. 

“My childhood,” Loki grunts against his neck, strained and sweating, “Was only half a century long. I became a man when you were but a boy at your father’s knee. I am so - _ ah - old _ compared to thee.”

Thor’s limbs envelop him and with them the smell of the storm, his eyes gray with an emotion Loki does not recognize - it is not a soft one, nor a gentle one. It has no place here in the languid summers, the beckoning winds of Asgard. If Loki could put a name to it, it would be this: fire. 

“It matters not,” Says Thor, his voice heady with the ignorance of youth, “I am prince, and will one day be king, of all the Nine Realms. Nothing matters to me.”

And Loki knows what Thor will say after this when they are lying quietly beneath the moonlit sky: the world is young and unraveling still; war, in its greatest, its most terrible shape, is just a shadow on the tongues of soothsayers. Ragnarok will come, aye, the end of worlds will come, aye, death will come in all her shifting forms, aye, but _ not yet _. We are gods, and we may do as we please.

It is because of this last statement, this greatest, most terrible truth of them all, that Asgard will burn. That when the sun rises tomorrow, Thor will wake alone, no warm body beside him, and Loki will be upon his father’s throne, waiting, with the same quiet patience with which death always waits, for the first black tides of war. 

“I wish you were lying,” Loki sighs, perhaps the last truly honest thing he will ever say to him, “I wish you knew how to lie.”

* * *

Kings, his father told him once, do not count their losses. It is an exercise in folly.

His words to live by, Loki had thought at the time. But sometimes, late at night in a storm, he forgets those words. Forgets that there was once a father who held him in his arms, smoothed his hair behind his ears and kissed his brow when he could not sleep. And he allows himself to wish. 

What does a king wish for? For his father, who is bones beneath the earth. For his brother, whose touch is barely more than a memory now, as a king cannot lay in his brother’s bed. It had taken them only a short while to remember that, that Loki’s footsteps, silent, wary, should ne’er have echoed in those halls as they did.

He wishes, also, that he need never count Thor amongst those losses. It would be a poor thing indeed to make an enemy of a lover. 

That, perhaps, is the greatest exercise in folly of them all. But he wishes it all the same.

* * *

“Marry me,” Says Thor one night, his face open and unadorned, as, Loki thinks, the face of a child. But Thor has not yet learned to keep parts of himself hidden away, has not yet learned that love a king may never show. He will, in time. The world is built on that; on the end of things. But he is a boy still, a boy so long as this moment remains, though it is only that: a moment. 

“Never,” Loki answers him with a serpent’s green smile, for he is no one’s to own. “I will never marry you.”

“Then who shall you marry?”

“No one at all.”

Then he kisses him once, on the still-soft crown of his head where the hair is light and feathery as a babe’s, where still he smells of the nursery. And he does not tell Thor that he loves him, even if the desire stirs foreign in his belly, even if Thor seems carved of marble in this white moonlight, for love a king may never show.

* * *

The tides shift; Loki begins to dream of war, for Jotunheim loves her and loves her victors even more. Loki will come to love her in time also, if he is to be a true Jotun king.

“Jotunheim is not yet strong enough,” Helblindi protests, but he is the younger brother, has ever been the younger brother, so Loki pays him no heed. 

“For father,” He says simply, and offers no more.

He recalls kneeling at Odin’s feet two centuries ago, a child no taller than the old man’s knee, and recalls what he vowed to do. Recalls the scrape of his horns against blood-damp snow, how many bodies lay around him with familiar faces, crimson eyes. Recalls the feeling of his younger brother’s fingers (quick, sure, deceptively strong) in his hair, how Odin-king took that also. Took that and the looming shadow of his father on the throne, his near-forgotten face and his voice like the crumbling of mountains. It is everything that has led to this moment and everything that will come of it after; it is war. It is his destiny. 

“This is our fate, brother,” He says quietly, “I could not prevent it even if I wished to.”

Helblindi nods, and his face is flat, unreadable to Loki for the first time since childhood. 

“I understand.”

  
  
Loki wonders if he really does, and were he younger, would weep at the feeling of solitude it gives him. 

* * *

That night, he dreams of his father, of sleeping in the crook of his massive arms. Their breathing is even. Their bodies are still. They do not call out for anything at all, not for the dead nor for the living, for they have each other and that is enough. The wind is blowing outside, the stars are a hundredfold, and the sky, the sky is large enough to hold a thousand more if asked… 

(But in the doorway, he does not see, is a shadow standing with its hands clasped. It is waiting, with a gentle patience, for the two to wake. It does not hesitate. Fate never hesitates.)

* * *

60,000 against 20,000, his councillors protest when Loki stands before them with his father’s spear held high in his hands - this is a war Jotunheim cannot win.

And yet, he says to them - and yet, I am Loki. I am the serpent and the flame and the smoke that drifts low on the water. I am a king.

“I am Loki,” He repeats with teeth bone-white and sharp, with eyes the bright hue of new blood. “I am a god, and I shall do as I please.”

For they are only men, these titans of Jotunheim. They are only men and men, as he reminds them from between his own delicate fangs, may die at any time, as it pleases a god, as it pleases a king. 

“As it pleases _ me_,” He adds, his little blade gleaming bright at his side. 

Jotunheim, it is decided, will march on Asgard at dawn, as it pleases Loki.

* * *

Jotunheim will march on Asgard at dawn, aye, but tonight there are snowflakes in Thor’s lashes. They sparkle like stars in this eerie light before dawn, and Loki considers casting a spell to keep them there forever, white glimmering amongst the gold.

“Loki,” Calls Thor.

  
Loki turns, his shadow long and liquid on the floor. His lips part. A confession trembles on his tongue; selfish thing. Love is always selfish, his father told him once.

Is it?

“Loki, come. Please.”

Loki shows his teeth in a smile like a wolf’s hungry maw. He would swallow Thor whole if only he could.

But: “Oh, Thor,” He says to him instead, voice soft but not gentle, never gentle. Kings are not gentle. And he comes.

And Thor wraps his fingers around Loki’s neck, long and pale, white in the moonlight. White as the first snow, for this is the skin he wears in Thor’s presence. And he thinks, selfishly, perhaps if they could only stay like this always… but nay, the sun must rise, the morrow must come. Even Loki, with all his magicks, with all his tricks, cannot stop what is to come. It is fate. 

“This is not your true skin.” Thor’s fingers slip to his shoulder, to the sickly jut of his bone where the veins are blue. “I would see you as you are.”

“Why?” Loki laughs, full of false glee. “Think you I am not beautiful in this form?”

  
  
“You are beautiful in all forms. But I would see you in your first.” 

Thor presses his forehead to his and - oh. The snowflakes have begun to melt. They trail down his golden cheeks like tears and Loki kisses them away, wet breath to his warm, warm skin. Wishes that this was not the end. Wishes that there was time still. 

“Show me, please.” Thor’s fingers tighten on Loki’s shoulder as though he could hold him there, could hold him there forever, as though Loki could be kept like other creatures can. “Let me have you as you are.”

“Sentimental,” Loki voice catches, trembles, then begins again. “Sentimental fool.”

His skin shimmers beneath the flat palm of Thor’s hand. The white of winter’s first frost melts away to blue - blue, the color of his father’s skin, his father’s father’s skin. The color of all kings of Jotunheim.

“If only… I wish…” Thor whispers, but can go no further, for Loki has pressed a frostbitten finger to his lips with a snarl.

“Hold your tongue, Odinson. What will come will come and we cannot change the threads of fate.” 

“Aye, but I wish it all the same.”

“Do not. It is an exercise in folly.”

  
  
Or so Loki’s father told him once, a long time ago. Then he swoops down and kisses Thor once more; kisses Thor, whose eyes are bright no more but become the color of the storm, blue and gray and black, his lover and his enemy and his friend, he who he is going to kill and will do so without tears. Kisses him once more then never again after, for the sun has risen gold on the horizon and they cannot unravel what threads have already been woven, cannot undo what has been done, though they might wish to, though a man might wish a great many things.

* * *

And so it goes that at the first pink flutterings of dawn, Jotunheim rides on Asgard, 20,000 against 60,000. Loki slays the men first of all, then their children, then their wives. And amongst the soldier’s shining heads he sees one pair of eyes, blue as the first cornflowers in spring and filled with something akin to fire, and he knows that Thor will not greet him now as he has greeted him before, with a smile and two lips that taste of the sun. 

“Forgive me, Loki,” Thor says instead, with his voice brittle and Mjolnir’s ungentle hilt held in his hand, with Loki pinned beneath him on the blood-cracked earth. Mjolnir does not stir from his grip; she is waiting, with the same kind of patience with which death always waits, for him to deliver the fatal blow. “I love you. I loved you.”

And Loki stares back at him without words, without even reproach, in bitter silence, and thinks of everything that has led to this moment, of everything that should not have been but was. Of Thor’s ale-bright lips against his own, the warmth of his hands dwelling in places they ought not to dwell, his blue eyes on a winter’s night, and he remembers something else, something stranger, a memory so distant it is barely more than a dream now:

This is war, his father explained to him as he plaited Loki’s hair beneath the pitted moon that night, and a man may die suddenly, without reason, without even time to cry out. Without omen.

Even a father?, Loki asked.

Laufey’s hands stilled, leaving the braid half-finished down Loki’s back. 

Even a father, he answered. Even a king.

He should have remembered those words, Loki thinks as Mjolnir comes closer, her whisper a gentle sound on the wind. He should have remembered that anyone may die quickly - even a father who last night braided his son’s hair beneath the pitted moon, even a god, even a king - and he should have feared it. 

He spits black blood onto Thor’s face, and then knows no more, for it is as Thor said long ago, as he whispered to Loki on some moonlit night: Ragnarok will come, aye, the end of worlds will come, aye, death will come in all her shifting forms, aye, and now they have come; and death has arrived in the shape of Thor’s gold-bright form on a warhorse.


End file.
